Pulled an almost-all-nighter

Well, I am coming off about three weeks of a seriously crazy work schedule. I have been working on a BIIG report that is finally due TODAY. The last few weeks have been high-speed stop and go - write a section, submit it to client for review, wait, wait, receive ridiculous client comments, revise frantically, conference calls, boss calls client mean names, revise again, submit for review, repeat. It culminated in an all-weekend bender topped off with my boss and I at the office until 4:00 this morning, putting the finishing touches on the report. Today is frantic too, because the report has to be reproduced and made into an electronic copy for submittal to the regulatory board. At any rate, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and am looking forward to getting a LOT of sleep tonight.

I don't think I've pulled an almost-all-nighter since college. My job has actually been a very relaxed 8-5 most of the time, so I don't really begrudge it these past few weeks. But it made me wonder, what about the rest of y'all? Do your jobs ever keep you up all night?

Blogging Parents

If you read our blog, then there's a pretty good chance that you either:
a) know my parents, Doug and Judy, or
b) are my parents, Doug and Judy.

If you fall into the former category, you may or may not know that my parents just embarked on a cross-country trip to visit family and friends, see sights, escape the frozen northeast, and find out whether they might want to upgrade from the family SUV with a roof rack and air matress in the back to a mini-RV (actually a "conversion van"), and join the rest of the baby-boomer generation on the electrically enabled side of the campground. Anyways, it looks like it will be an exciting trip - they're going lots of places I would love to see someday, especially in the southwest - and they just set off this morning. My mom is going to try to keep a blog going during their trip, so if you're interested, HERE is the link. I'll also add it to the links section on the right. Bon voyage!

'It Barks and Bites!"

Hey! I got a mandolin! I returned the rental I've had for a couple months and got my very own solid-wood F-style bluegrass mandolin. Here she is, in all her glory. I did a fair amount of research about it online, but in the store I am too much of a novice to even really tell a difference between the $200 mandolins and the $2000 ones. Consequently, my Rover (on the inside it says "Rover - it barks and bites!") is on the lower end of the price spectrum. But as you can see it came with a fancy case, so I'm ready to hit the street corner with my ragged version of Cripple Creek an see if I can make a few bucks. Since the last mandolin update I've learned 'Red Haired Boy' and yesterday figured out the chords to some Tom Petty song that my iPod decided to play on shuffle. But I'm about to go download some new ones to practice from Folk of the Wood, which is a great online resource for any stringed instrument.

And just because no blog post in the post-Banjo era would be complete without a cute picture of him, here you go. Kate trimmed off some of his long neck hair the other day, and stripped a bunch of his other hair (that's what you do with wire-haired dogs), so he may look a little different. You should ask her about what he did to her laptop cord, too...

Swing Shifts

Hi everyone. Happy President's Day. I'm celebrating by working until midnight!

No really, now that our telescope is undergoing some testing that involves being inside a vacuum chamber with liquid nitrogen flowing all around it, 24-7 personel coverage is required to make sure someone is around in case something goes wrong (a lot can go wrong at -196 C).

Anyways, it's not so bad, as I have my mornings free to take a long walk with Banjo, run some errands during normal business hours, and have a relaxing morning. And it's only a few days at a time. But there's something a little strange about being at work at midnight. At least I don't have to do the graveyard shift (midnight to 8am). Ick.

Speaking of Banjo, our trip this past weekend to Tahoe for some skiing and snowshoeing and winter fun went really well! The dog is still not thrilled about car rides, but he just hunkers down and deals. We stayed in a nice rental house/cabin right near Donner Lake that Dustin found - with 7 of us it was pretty affordable to do, and way nicer than a hotel or doing a day trip. We went up with Dustin + Sarah, Adam + Ashley, and Alex. Not surprisingly, the male contingent was all Lockheed employees. Sigh.

Friday some of us skied at Alpine Meadows, and the others went XC skiing at Tahoe Donner, right near where we were staying. Kate went romping in the snow with Banjo, who loved it! The weather was sunny and warm, which was nice but made for some soft, slushy snow in places. I really like Alpine, though - especially getting to hike over to the back side and ski the open bowls that lead to the Sherwood lift.

Saturday we packed up and headed over to a trailhead off I-80 near Donner Pass and set off on a popular trail to hike Castle Peak. There's a good description of the snowshoe hike we did here or here (since we didn't take many ourselves). Despite the poor winter, there was a pretty good amount of snow up above 8000'. Our trail took us from about 8000-9000', going from the highway up towards a pass and then a quick spur up part of the steep ridge towards the peak before heading back down. Banjo was really good about the snow, and we were able to let him off leash for most of it. On the way back down he seemed to get tired and was dragging a little, but this was the longest hike we've done with him (~6 miles), and in snow, and steep at times, and at altitude (does that affect dogs the same?). Anyways, we were real glad to see that he not only could handle, but enjoyed such adventures.

Sunday we had a nice laid-back recovery day where Kate and I cooked a whole bunch of things - waffles (on our wedding present waffle maker), minestrone soup (with wedding present knife to chop veggies), "the best meatloaf recipe" (with wedding present mixing bowls), a big batch of pesto (with wedding present salad spinner), and morrocan chicken (with wedding pot to make cous cous). After a trip to the dog park we lounged and watched "The Dish," a movie about the Austrailan satellite dish that was used during the Apollo 11 moon landing. Thanks for the recommendation, Auntie! We liked it.

And that brings us to today, which brings me to the start of my swing shift in 6 minutes. Off I go...

He's growing up so fast...

One of the unexpectedly gratifying parts of owning this dog so far has been watching little improvements in his behavior every day. He was never a bad dog, but he was (and still is) pretty timid and not exactly a social butterfly. So every time he does something new and fun it seems like his true personality is coming out more and more.
Banjo is at his most excitable in the morning. As soon as he hears our alarm go off, he trots into our room and sits on the floor to watch us. We usually "snooze" ten or fifteen more minutes, but as soon as the first foot hits the floor, Banjo declares it playtime. Toes get licked, pajama bottoms and blankets get pulled, and he spins around in circles over and over.
We took a long walk to the dog park after breakfast this morning, and there were only six dogs there, which was great for Banjo. After lingering on the edges for a little while, one particularly friendly dog lured him into more spirited play, which eventually escalated to Banjo tearing around the dog park as fast as his little legs could carry him being chased by the entire pack of dogs. It had been raining all day, so it was an absolute mud pit and all the dogs were skidding all over, and were covered in mud. He had a great time - he was jumping and playing with all the big dogs by the time we were ready to head home. He also stopped and visited with all the other people there - he loves to get petted.
We walked home via the busiest road in this area, El Camino Real. We had tried to take him on that road once before and only managed to drag our little wide-eyed terrier about a half a block before giving up. He really hates cars - probably a big part of the reason he survived as a stray long enough to get caught and taken to the pound. Anyway, we walked 5 or 6 blocks on El Camino, and Banjo only balked twice. He's clearly learning to trust us, which is really fun.
Anyway, that's the update for now. Tom put together a cool collage of new pictures of Banjo we thought we'd post. You can see his favorite sock, his first bath, and even a picture of his cousin Lucky. Fun days!!

My Subaru is Cursed

In my last entry I mentioned the largeish dent/scrape that anonymously appeared over the weekend on the rear quarter-panel of my car. So this morning, during the ~8am frenzy of parents dropping off their kids at the elementary school across the street, I look out the window from our kitchen to see a woman putting a note on my windshield! I thought "Oh good, the person who dented my car came back to leave a note, shame on me for for doubting the integrity of our new Sunnyvale neighbors" as I went outside to greet her and see what she had to say. Ugh. She was the flustered driver of the the kid-filled minivan responsible for YET ANOTHER scrape on my car, having turned too sharply to get around my car (parked on the street) to get off the road to drop off kids. At least she left a note, and insurance info. But seriously - you would think that living in a quiet neighborhood in Sunnyvale my car would be relatively safe from dents and scrapes as opposed to if we lived in say, San Francisco. Grrrr. So I guess I can get the minor scrapes in the front from the woman today fixed (as I have her insurance info) but the more significant dent/scrape/gash in the back would have to come out of pocket. Oh well, cosmetic... [grits teeth].

Super Sunday Update

Yeah, we've been pretty bad about posting lately, our apologies to the loyal readers of Tom 'n Kate. Let's see, it's been a pretty busy work week for both of us, and actually Kate is working on a big report for work across from me as I type here, and we both worked on Saturday too. My excuse is that we're preparing to put our telescope into a vacuum chamber for 2 weeks or so, and consequently are in a rush to get a lot of things done before it's put in the chamber and we aren't able to work on it for a while, not to mention making sure we don't spill liquid nitrogen all over the thing when it's in there.

Banjo is making great strides! He's more comfortable around home and especially around us - he clearly likes being where the action is, but is happy to hang out on the couch or lay on the floor too. He's getting pretty good at walks, that is, he's not tugging on the leash much and stays on the left side pretty well. Hasn't really barked much at all, and we have been working on "come," "off" [the couch/bed/bathroom floor], "sit/stay," and "heel" while walking. He has a ways to go of course, but it has only been 2 weeks.

We went on a late-afternoon hike in the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve on Saturday, which is the closest one to us and conveniently is one of the few that allows dogs. He seemed to love it and it was a nice hike up a big hill then back down. Unfortunately, after we got home we found about 6 ticks on him. Hmmmm... Well, I guess the tick/flea medicine is supposed to kill them, but just makes me a little nervous about the seemingly high likelihood that we will miss a few ticks here and there and they would become a problem.

Car rides, which were once terrifying, are now merely troublesome. We took him to the dog park today, and he tried out both the "big dog" and the "small dog" sides. It might take a few times before he really figures out how to romp around with the other dogs, but he did fine and got to sniff a cornucopia of dog butts.

Oh! On the toy front, Banjo's favorite toys seem to have become 1) Tom's leather slippers, 2) The purple hedgehog squeaky toy (picture soon), 3) Tom's socks, 4) Any blanket that Kate is currently wrapped up in, and 5) his snowman Kong (probably because it is often filled with peanut butter and kibbles). So we're making progress there, especially with his recent complete desctruction of the hedgehog. I guess it was fun to gnaw on.

That's a lot of dog news. Other things of note:
- My car mysteriously got an annoyingly large scrape/dent on the back fender sometime within the past 2 days. Rrrrhghgh. Oh well, cosmetic.
- We have decided that Stella Artois is a delicious beer.
- Still not much snow at all in the Sierra Nevada, hopefully we'll get some more soon. Glad we got a couple trips in early.
- Looking forward to the UNC/Dook game on Wednesday, should be interesting considering each team has lost their last game (or 2 if you're Duke).
- Only 56 days until opening day!